6 May 1983 AD: World-class Anglican Scholar, Prof. Gerald Bray, Tagged to Leader Churchman

6 May 1983 A.D.  Anglican scholar, Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) Gerald Bray, tagged to lead as Churchman’s new editor. http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2014/03/7-mar-14-tribute-to-rev-dr-prof-gerald.html

An appreciation of Gerald Bray

“Three decades ago, in January 1984, the Church Society’s theological journal, Churchman, was relaunched under new leadership. At a moment of crisis within the Anglican movement, when confusion reigned about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, some were beginning to ask: ‘When does neo-evangelicalism become simply a new form of the old liberalism?’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). The Church Society council turned to a young tutor at Oak Hill College, Gerald Lewis Bray, to take a lead as Churchman’s new editor…”

– Andrew Atherstone commemorates 30 years of editorial oversight of Churchman by Gerald Bray in this appreciation. (PDF file.)
http://acl.asn.au/an-appreciation-of-gerald-bray/

Also, Church Society carried the story.
http://www.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/Cway_131_AtherstoneBray.pdf 

GERALD BRAY AT CHURCHMAN: THIRTY YEARS AND COUNTING

By Andrew Atherstone

Three decades ago, in January 1984, the Church Society’s theological journal, Churchman, was relaunched under new leadership. At a moment of crisis within the Anglican movement, when confusion reigned about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, some were beginning to ask: ‘When does neo-evangelicalism become simply a new form of the old liberalism?’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). The Church Society council turned to a young tutor at Oak Hill College, Gerald Lewis Bray, to take a lead as Churchman’s new editor. An expert in patristic theology, with a doctorate from the

Sorbonne and a monograph on Tertullian already to his name, Bray was a rising star in the evangelical firmament. He was determined to bring new vigour to the journal: `orthodoxy can and should be held and proclaimed with passion; it should stir the blood of the faint-hearted and awaken new resources of spiritual life which sleep for want of the sound of the trumpet’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). In his first editorial he laid out Churchman’s theological priorities under his tenure – it was to be clearly evangelical, scholarly, ecclesiastical (speaking ‘to the church’) and evangelistic: ‘we believe that Bible-based Christianity is as relevant today as it has ever been’.

Thirty years on, Gerald Bray is still in harness and has managed to outlast even Sir Alex Ferguson. In the meantime other theological journals have come and gone. Anvil was founded in 1984 to express the views of anyone claiming the title of ‘evangelical’. It survived until its Silver Jubilee in 2009, but subscriptions dwindled: it wobbled and fell, to be revived instead online – instant blogs, like Fulcrum, have stolen its market. But Churchman continues from strength to strength, due primarily to two factors: a robust evangelical perspective and the Bray editorials. Indeed John Pearce (chairman of the Church Society council in the 1980s) observed the main reason for recruiting him to the editor’s chair in the first place was ‘to get clear-cut editorials’. And Bray has not disappointed. His Churchman editorials now number 120 and counting (all recently collected together on the Church Society webpage). In other theological journals, editorials are dull summaries of the contents or innocuous ramblings on contemporary events. But Bray’s style is quite different and sets his editorials apart from the crowd. Always incisive and stimulating, sometimes trenchant and deliberately provocative, unafraid to challenge party shibboleths and dispel Anglican confusions, the Bray editorials are a consistent highlight.

Rather than seeing Churchman as merely a stepping stone to greater things, Bray has stuck at the task throughout his flourishing career, even as he grew from a precocious young talent to a theological heavyweight of international repute.

After a dozen years at Oak Hill College it seemed in 1993 that he might be lost to the Church of England when he transferred across the Atlantic, to work alongside Timothy George at Beeson Divinity School, Alabama, as Anglican Professor of Divinity. Previous conservative evangelical exiles in North America, Philip E. Hughes and James I. Packer, never returned home, to the detriment of Anglican evangelicalism. But Bray was recruited by the Latimer Trust in 2006 as director of research with a roving brief to write, teach, and encourage young theologians, based back in England at Cambridge, a stone’s throw from Tyndale House. He remains research professor at Beeson and travels worldwide in high demand as a doctrine lecturer, at the nexus of the academy and the church.

Churchman is just the tip of the iceberg in Bray’s prodigious literary output. He writes books and essays faster than many of us can read them, and it is said (surely legendary) that he has never in his life missed a publishing deadline. His bibliography includes textbooks which have become standard for students and pastors, alongside specialist tomes for the ecclesiastical historian. Early volumes include Creeds, Councils and Christ (1984), expounding the classic doctrinal statements of the ecumenical councils in the first five centuries; and Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present (1996), which was voted one of Christianity Today’s books of the year. Bray was series edited for IVP’s ‘Contours of Christian Theology’, a set of concise introductions on key topics from prominent evangelical authors, including Sinclair Ferguson on the Holy Spirit, Peter Jensen on revelation, Paul Helm on providence, and Edmund Clowney on the church. Bray himself contributed The Doctrine of God (1993), focused on Trinitarian theology, including insights from Eastern Orthodoxy which are often forgotten amongst Protestants.

One of Bray’s chief skills is as a critical editor of ancient and inaccessible texts, bringing them within reach of a contemporary audience for the first time. As a linguist he is a master of Latin and French, and is rumoured also to be fluent in German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek and Russian. Is there any European language he does not speak? He has collaborated closely with Professor Thomas Oden in unearthing the wisdom of the early church Fathers to resource theological renewal in the church today. To IVP’s series of Ancient Christian Commentaries, edited by Oden, Bray has published on Romans (1998), 1 and 2 Corinthians (1999) and the letters of James, Peter, John and Jude (2000). These provide carefully selected comments and homilies on Scripture from patristic authors like John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, the Venerable Bede, and lesser known figures like Didymus the Blind and Severian of Gabala. Bray and Oden are series editors of IVP’s Ancient Christian Texts, English translations of full-length patristic commentaries and sermons – currently running to twelve volumes including Origen on Numbers, Eusebius of Caesarea on Isaiah, Jerome on Jeremiah, and Theodore of Mopsuestia on John. Bray himself translated Ambrosiaster, a forgotten Bible teacher, the earliest Latin commentator on all thirteen of Paul’s epistles (2 volumes, 2000). To IVP’s series on Ancient Christian Doctrine, Bray contributed We Believe in One God (2009), a survey of patristic comment on the opening clauses of the Nicene Creed: ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen’. Ever versatile, he has also published the volume on Galatians and Ephesians (2011) in IVP’s Reformation Commentary on Scripture, edited by Timothy George, a selection of material from Latin, German, Dutch, French and English authors in the sixteenth century. This puts nourishing Reformation material in the hands of English speaking pastors and preachers for the first time.

Those concerned for the historical foundations of the Anglican Communion have equal reason to value Bray’s remarkable capacity as an editor. His Documents of the English Reformation (1994), originally compiled for students at Oak Hill, ought to be on the bedside table of every clergyman.

With the Church of England Record Society and the Ecclesiastical Law Society he has published The Anglican Canons 1529-1947 (1998), swiftly followed by Tudor Church Reform (2000), containing the Henrician Canons of 1535 and Archbishop Cranmer’s reformatio legume ecclesiasticarum of 1552. Bray’s staggering editorial achievement, perhaps least known to Churchman readers, is a critical edition of the entire surviving records of the Convocations of Canterbury, York, Ireland, and Sodor and Man, from the middle ages to the nineteenth century – running to a massive twenty volumes, and retailing at £1,500. For any other scholar, this in itself would be a lifetime’s work, but Bray completed the project single-handed in a few short years.

More recently with the Latimer Trust he has published an edition of prefaces to English Bible versions, Translating the Bible: From William Tyndale to King James (2010). And there are high hopes that he will soon be persuaded to publish a critical edition of the various Anglican Homilies, a major desideratum for Anglican readers who want to move beyond old Victorian reprints.

Gerald Bray is no ivory tower academic. These numerous scholarly projects are for the service of the church and the building up of God’s people. When he contributes Churchman editorials about the contemporary Anglican scene, or popular Latimer Trust booklets like The Oath of Canonical Obedience (2004) and The Faith We Confess: An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (2009), we can be confident they are based on deep doctrinal and historical scholarship, distilled for the busy minister or lay Christian. Bray’s current project may yet prove to be one of his most significant. A lifetime of theological reflection has borne fruit in his latest magnum opus, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (2012), a goldmine for those keen to mature in their Christian thinking. We eagerly anticipate its companion volume on historical theology, God Has Spoken, in 2014. It is a rare privilege, and a delight, to have a theologian of such stature at the helm of Churchman. As he enters upon his fourth decade as editor, we say both ‘Thank you, Gerald’, and ‘Thank you God for Gerald’. Keep those editorials coming!

Andrew Atherstone is Latimer research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Churchman editorial board.

7 Mar 14: Tribute to (Rev. Dr. Prof.) Gerald Bray

An appreciation of Gerald Bray

Posted on March 7, 2014
Filed under Opinion
“Three decades ago, in January 1984, the Church Society’s theological journal, Churchman, was relaunched under new leadership. At a moment of crisis within the Anglican movement, when confusion reigned about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, some were beginning to ask: ‘When does neo-evangelicalism become simply a new form of the old liberalism?’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). The Church Society council turned to a young tutor at Oak Hill College, Gerald Lewis Bray, to take a lead as Churchman’s new editor…”

– Andrew Atherstone commemorates 30 years of editorial oversight of Churchman by Gerald Bray in this appreciation. (PDF file.)

http://acl.asn.au/an-appreciation-of-gerald-bray/

Also, Church Society carried the story.
http://www.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/Cway_131_AtherstoneBray.pdf


GERALD BRAY AT CHURCHMAN: THIRTY YEARS AND COUNTING

By Andrew Atherstone

Three decades ago, in January 1984, the Church Society’s theological journal, Churchman, was relaunched under new leadership. At a moment of crisis within the Anglican movement, when confusion reigned about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, some were beginning to ask:

‘When does neo-evangelicalism become simply a new form of the old liberalism?’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). The Church Society council turned to a young tutor at Oak Hill College, Gerald Lewis Bray, to take a lead as Churchman’s new editor. An expert in patristic theology, with a doctorate from the

Sorbonne and a monograph on Tertullian already to his name, Bray was a rising star in the evangelical firmament. He was determined to bring new vigour to the journal: `orthodoxy can and should be held and proclaimed with passion; it should stir the blood of the faint-hearted and awaken new resources of spiritual life which sleep for want of the sound of the trumpet’ (CEN, 6 May 1983). In his first editorial he laid out Churchman’s theological priorities under his tenure – it was to be clearly evangelical, scholarly, ecclesiastical (speaking ‘to the church’) and evangelistic: ‘we

believe that Bible-based Christianity is as relevant today as it has ever been’.

Thirty years on, Gerald Bray is still in harness and has managed to outlast even Sir Alex Ferguson. In the meantime other theological journals have come and gone. Anvil was founded in 1984 to express the views of anyone claiming the title of ‘evangelical’. It survived until its Silver Jubilee in

2009, but subscriptions dwindled: it wobbled and fell, to be revived instead online – instant blogs, like Fulcrum, have stolen its market. But Churchman continues from strength to strength, due primarily to two factors: a robust evangelical perspective and the Bray editorials. Indeed John Pearce (chairman of the Church Society council in the 1980s) observed the main reason for recruiting him to the editor’s chair in the first place was ‘to get clear-cut editorials’. And Bray has not disappointed. His Churchman editorials now number 120 and counting (all recently collected together on the Church Society webpage). In other theological journals, editorials are dull summaries of the contents or innocuous ramblings on contemporary events. But Bray’s style is quite different and sets his editorials apart from the crowd. Always incisive and stimulating, sometimes trenchant and deliberately provocative, unafraid to challenge party shibboleths and dispel Anglican confusions, the Bray editorials are a consistent highlight.

Rather than seeing Churchman as merely a stepping stone to greater things, Bray has stuck at the task throughout his flourishing career, even as he grew from a precocious young talent to a theological heavyweight of international repute.

After a dozen years at Oak Hill College it seemed in 1993 that he might be lost to the Church of England when he transferred across the Atlantic, to work alongside Timothy George at Beeson Divinity School, Alabama, as Anglican Professor of Divinity. Previous conservative evangelical exiles in North America, Philip E. Hughes and James I. Packer, never returned home, to the detriment of Anglican evangelicalism. But Bray was recruited by the Latimer Trust in 2006 as director of research with a roving brief to write, teach, and encourage young theologians, based back in England at Cambridge, a stone’s throw from Tyndale

House. He remains research professor at Beeson and travels worldwide in high demand as a doctrine lecturer, at the nexus of the academy and the church.

Churchman is just the tip of the iceberg in Bray’s prodigious literary output. He writes books and essays faster than many of us can read them, and it is said (surely legendary) that he has never in his life missed a publishing deadline. His bibliography includes textbooks which have become standard

for students and pastors, alongside specialist tomes for the ecclesiastical historian. Early volumes include Creeds, Councils and Christ (1984), expounding the classic doctrinal statements of the ecumenical councils in the first five centuries; and Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present (1996), which was voted one of Christianity Today’s books of the year. Bray was series edited for IVP’s ‘Contours of Christian Theology’, a set of concise introductions on key topics from prominent evangelical authors, including Sinclair Ferguson on the Holy Spirit, Peter Jensen on revelation, Paul

Helm on providence, and Edmund Clowney on the church. Bray himself contributed The Doctrine of God (1993), focused on Trinitarian theology, including insights from Eastern Orthodoxy which are often forgotten amongst Protestants.

One of Bray’s chief skills is as a critical editor of ancient and inaccessible texts, bringing them within reach of a contemporary audience for the first time. As a linguist he is a master of Latin and French, and is rumoured also to be fluent in German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek

and Russian. Is there any European language he does not speak? He has collaborated closely with Professor Thomas Oden in unearthing the wisdom of the early church Fathers to resource theological renewal in the church today. To IVP’s series of Ancient Christian Commentaries, edited by Oden, Bray has published on Romans (1998), 1 and 2 Corinthians (1999) and the letters of James, Peter, John and Jude (2000). These provide carefully selected comments and homilies on Scripture from patristic authors like John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, the Venerable Bede, and lesser known figures like Didymus the Blind and Severian of Gabala. Bray and Oden are series editors of IVP’s Ancient Christian Texts, English translations of full-length patristic commentaries and sermons – currently running to twelve volumes including Origen on Numbers, Eusebius of Caesarea on Isaiah, Jerome on Jeremiah, and Theodore of Mopsuestia on John. Bray himself translated Ambrosiaster, a forgotten Bible teacher, the earliest Latin commentator on all thirteen of Paul’s epistles (2 volumes, 2000). To IVP’s series on Ancient Christian Doctrine, Bray contributed We Believe in One God (2009), a survey of patristic comment on the opening clauses of the Nicene Creed: ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen’. Ever versatile, he has also published the volume on Galatians and Ephesians (2011) in IVP’s Reformation Commentary on Scripture, edited by Timothy George, a selection of material from Latin, German, Dutch, French and English authors in the sixteenth century. This puts nourishing Reformation material in the hands of English speaking pastors and preachers for the first time.

Those concerned for the historical foundations of the Anglican Communion have equal reason to value Bray’s remarkable capacity as an editor. His Documents of the English Reformation (1994), originally compiled for students at Oak Hill, ought to be on the bedside table of every clergyman.

With the Church of England Record Society and the Ecclesiastical Law Society he has published The Anglican Canons 1529-1947 (1998), swiftly followed by Tudor Church Reform (2000), containing the Henrician Canons of 1535 and Archbishop Cranmer’s reformatio legume ecclesiasticarum of 1552. Bray’s staggering editorial achievement, perhaps least known to Churchman readers, is a critical edition of the entire surviving records of the Convocations of Canterbury, York, Ireland, and Sodor and Man, from the middle ages to the nineteenth century – running to a massive twenty volumes, and retailing at £1,500. For any other scholar, this in itself would be a lifetime’s work, but Bray completed the project single-handed in a few short years.

More recently with the Latimer Trust he has published an edition of prefaces to English Bible versions, Translating the Bible: From William Tyndale to King James (2010). And there are high hopes that he will soon be persuaded to publish a critical edition of the various Anglican Homilies, a

major desideratum for Anglican readers who want to move beyond old Victorian reprints.

Gerald Bray is no ivory tower academic. These numerous scholarly projects are for the service of the church and the building up of God’s people. When he contributes Churchman editorials about the contemporary Anglican scene, or popular Latimer Trust booklets like The Oath of Canonical Obedience (2004) and The Faith We Confess: An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (2009), we can be confident they are based on deep doctrinal and historical scholarship, distilled for the busy minister or lay Christian. Bray’s current project may yet prove to be one of his most significant. A lifetime of theological reflection has borne fruit in his latest magnum opus, God Is Love: A Biblical

and Systematic Theology (2012), a goldmine for those keen to mature in their Christian thinking. We eagerly anticipate its companion volume on historical theology, God Has Spoken, in 2014. It is a rare privilege, and a delight, to have a theologian of such stature at the helm of Churchman. As he

enters upon his fourth decade as editor, we say both ‘Thank you, Gerald’, and ‘Thank you God for Gerald’. Keep those editorials coming!

Andrew Atherstone is Latimer research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Churchman editorial board.

Dr. Gerald Bray: GAFCON II & Canterbury Tales

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_127_4_Editorial.pdf

A Canterbury Tale

by Gerald Bray

 

GAFCON II has come and gone, and a great time was had by all 1300 participants, including over 300 bishops, who represented twenty-eight of the Anglican Communion’s thirty-eight provinces. It sounds impressive and in many ways it was, but statistics of this kind conceal as much as they reveal. Many of the bigger African provinces turned out in force, but representation from the developed world was patchy and at the episcopal level almost non-existent. Much as it wants to be a movement for the renewal of worldwide Anglicanism, GAFCON is a bit like the curate’s egg—good in parts. Its leadership is committed, its followers are loyal and expectant, but its influence remains limited to the sorts of people who would support its aims even if it did not exist. It has not yet reached out beyond its predictable support base, and unless it does so, the energy that has gone into it will be dissipated and it will go the way of other initiatives that never got anywhere.  

Having said that, there is no denying that GAFCON has come a long way in a short time. The improvised character of GAFCON I has gone and in its place has come a much more sophisticated and responsible organisation. No other group of Anglicans could stage an event with as broad a participation, and that alone ought to persuade people to take it seriously.  

Unfortunately, things do not work like that in the real Anglican world. The archbishop of Canterbury could not attend but he was good enough to find time in his diary to make a quick trip to Kenya just before it opened, and to send greetings to it on a video that was played to the assembled delegates. He meant well, and those who met him testified to the warm relations that they had with him. Unfortunately everything he said and did betrayed the fact that the English church establishment had been outflanked and had effectively missed the bus. The official communiqué from Lambeth Palace stated that the main reason for the archbishop’s visit to Kenya was to express solidarity with the victims of the Westgate Shopping Centre atrocity the previous month, but laudable though sympathy for them was, it was an implausible excuse. The archbishop did not rush off to Peshawar to show his support for Christian victims of Muslim terrorism in Pakistan, nor would anyone have expected him to. 

Unless of course, GAFCON had been meeting there at the same time… In the end things got so bad that Lambeth Palace was citing the baptism of Prince George as a reason for the archbishop’s non-attendance, as if the royal family would not have been willing to find a more convenient date for the ceremony. The impression left is one of incompetence and dysfunctionality in which almost any excuse to downplay the significance of GAFCON has been eagerly seized on and exploited for far more than it is worth. 

The archbishop of Canterbury means well and there is no doubt that his heart is with GAFCON in many ways. He told the delegates that he wants its aims to be those of the Communion as a whole and there is no reason not to believe him. But if he is going to occupy the place that the Anglican Communion assigns to him and exercise the kind of influence for good that he undoubtedly wants to, he will have to get with the programme, as the Americans say. GAFCON is not just one more Anglican organisation, like the Mothers’ Union, that can be flattered and pacified by an occasional nod from the hierarchy. It is a renewal movement that wants to make its agenda that of the church as a whole, and it will expect Justin Welby to nail his colours to the mast. It is a wonderful opportunity for him to assume the leadership of the Communion and use the GAFCON base to bring about the kinds of changes that he wants to see, but will he take it? One is reminded of Louis XVI in the early years of the French Revolution. The Third Estate handed their much-needed reforms to him on a plate and begged him to be their leader, but Louis, good man that he was at heart and eager to please, lacked the vision and the courage to fulfil his historical destiny and so paid the price for misplaced loyalty to a lost cause. Will Justin Welby come to a similar end, and for the same reasons? 

The stark nature of the problem can be seen by comparing Dr. Welby’s video message to GAFCON with the address given by its chairman, the archbishop of Kenya. Both speeches were positive and upbeat, but Canterbury’s looks decidedly anaemic next to Kenya’s. Dr Welby told the delegates that they must strive for holiness, which is true and encouraging. He mentioned that in many places there has been a sexual revolution in the last generation, but inexplicably failed to add that for Christians, holiness means confining sexual activity to what it is meant for—heterosexual monogamy. Coyness on so obvious a point as this is not a good sign. The archbishop of Canterbury wants to seek harmony and reconciliation among people who hold very different views, but there are limits to such a vision and in his address the archbishop of Kenya made it plain what those limits were. 

It is obviously true, as Canterbury said, that Christians disagree about many things and that we have to live together. But it is also true that there is a core of beliefs that cannot be compromised, and as Kenya did not hesitate to point out, it is there that the rub lies. What is dividing the Anglican Communion is not a disagreement between Christians who hold different opinions about secondary matters, but a titanic struggle between believers and apostates who want to call themselves ‘Anglicans.’ This is very hard for the English establishment to accept, but it is a fact that cannot be denied. The crisis is particularly acute in the Western provinces, where the corporate culture of the church reflects the prevailing trends in society. It is no secret that the advanced countries of the West have abandoned their inherited Christianity for atheism. The pride and arrogance that comes from economic success and technological progress has led many to adopt beliefs and practices that go completely against the teaching of the Bible, which is discounted and publicly derided, even by people who claim to be members of the church.  

Students of history know that this cannot go on forever—sooner or later there will be a reckoning, when the pride of man will be knocked low. Pontius Pilate no doubt thought that the Roman Empire would last forever, but even as he passed judgment on Jesus the barbarians were beginning to stir and the seeds of ultimate collapse were being sown. Does anyone in Europe, America or Australia seriously think that China, India and Africa will subsidise a decadent and immoral West indefinitely? Can they not see the writing on the wall? And do Anglicans in particular not understand that GAFCON draws its strength from these modern ‘barbarians’ (pardon the term) who will eventually triumph? The African primates sense this, and with prophetic grace they are calling their erring brothers and sisters in the developed world to repent before it is too late. To their minds, the appearance of an archbishop of Canterbury who is on their spiritual wavelength is God’s final call to the Western provinces to get on board before the catastrophe strikes, and they expect their warnings to be heeded.  

Nobody should be in any doubt about this. If the Anglican Communion is to survive, and if its witness to the developed world is to be faithful to the Gospel, its Western branches will have to eat humble pie and conform to what GAFCON sees as necessary. If that does not happen, then GAFCON and its supporters will go their own way and the rest of the Communion will be left high and dry. This is what the archbishop of Canterbury needs to take on board as part of his own strategy for renewal. Trying to balance the orthodoxy of GAFCON with the heresies of those who disagree with it will not work. A choice must be made, and the GAFCON way, though not perfect, is still the only one that has anything to offer the church as a whole. 

The GAFCON leadership, for its part, needs to take stock of its position and develop its own strategy for its dealings with the wider Communion. Here it can learn a lot from the failure of the evangelical wing of the Church of England to make any serious impression on either the church or the nation, despite its numbers and enthusiasm. Like GAFCON, English Evangelicals have been great organisers. Between 1967 and 2003 they were able to gather four NEACs (National Evangelical Anglican Conferences or Congresses) which were well-attended and apparently successful. They also put together a Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and an Anglican Evangelical Assembly (AEA), producing a kind of shadow General Synod within the wider church. Unfortunately the only effect of this was to create an added layer of meetings where people have ended up discussing very little at great length. Those involved are fully occupied with this and think that what they are doing is important, but nobody else pays any attention. Meanwhile, the real government of the church has fallen into the hands of liberals who have used their influence to pass legislation that guarantees a permanent second-class status for Evangelicals, who now run the risk of being shut out of the church altogether. In particular, the liberals have ensured that nobody who opposes women’s ordination (or especially their consecration to the episcopate) has any hope of entering the church’s hierarchy, and that new ordinands may have trouble even finding a curacy. It is small consolation to be told that they can always be elected to CEEC instead.

For the rest, see:


http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_127_4_Editorial.pdf